Title

Author

Availablity

Open Access Graduate Research Paper

Keywords

Writers' workshops; Composition (Language arts); Rhetoric;

Abstract

A writing workshop has always been a part of my classroom. Since the beginnings of my career as an English teacher, I have believed that it allows my students the freedom required for them to think for themselves and to express their thoughts clearly. Yet while students have clamored for such trust and autonomy in their classes, they often have a hard time adapting to this change, to setting their own goals and making individual strides to meet those goals. They are very used to having their teachers tell them what to think and what to write about. They have gotten good at the game of writing down an instructor’s ideas in their notes and regurgitating those ideas to the instructor in a test, literary analysis paper, or "creative" project. However, in a learning-centered environment like writing workshop, the teacher is not at the forefront, the kids are.